World of Warcraft - Legion - Something's not quite right...

Shrouded in fog since the world was sundered more than ten thousand years ago, the ancient realm of Pandaria has remained unspoiled by war. Its lush forests and cloud-ringed mountains are home to a complex ecosystem of indigenous races and exotic creatures. It is the homeland of the enigmatic Pandaren, a race that celebrates life to the fullest even while under siege by an ancient menace.

The new continent reveals itself to a broken world just as the Alliance and Horde are spiraling ever closer to a war that will consume all of Azeroth. Will the mists of Pandaria part to reveal the world's salvation? Or will the battle to control this rich and breathtaking new land push the two mighty factions over the brink of war and into total annihilation? The answers await within Pandaria's mysterious shores!

The new release is now live! Level to 90! Battle Pets for hours at a time! Stay awake long past your bedtime to reach that realm first! Level 90! Panda Monks!

Some links to help you get into your new play styles (feel free to PM me more):

Horde: Ars Brute Squad (Chromaggus (Update!: ABS is moving to Bleeding Hollow): Open to all Arsians in good standing! The bar really is not that high, they let me in! To get into the guild just login, and /join ars. An officer can get you in, and don't forget to sign up in the forums!Website / forums: http://arsbrutesquad.com

If you love beer, bacon, and / or raiding while drunk then you will fit right in! There are exciting things going on, and if you want a great bunch to play with then definitely check them out!

Alliance: Ars Discordia - US-Doomhammer-PVE: Ars Technica Members: As a nod to our heritage from the Ars Technica Fora, any member in good standing of the GESC community from ArsT is eligible for a F&F invite with access to full membership after a month.

A /who ars discordia should find anyone online who can point you in the direction of an officer. Some hang out in /ars but not always.Website http://www.arsdiscordia.org

Why the new thread?

I have not actively played since last January, but I read this thread every day. I just have not had time to log in to the game, but I am always around to add updates to this landing page and / or update the thread title if no one licks it! Have fun, get to 90, kill things, collect virtual shinies, eschew sleep!

Regarding portals back to Azeroth, doesn't the Horde have a permaportal to Org in one of their first towns/hubs? Alliance has a permanent portal back to SW in Paw'don Village, which you get to after you massacre the Horde town of Garrosh'gar (or whatever it's called) when you first arrive. It's literally like 6-8 quests into the Jade Forest zone.

I'm having trouble adjusting to the new Druid tanking system. I know it isn't radically different, but it is different enough that I'm either watching cooldowns/rage or being situationally aware, but not both. I used BadKitty in Cata but the author hasn't updated it in a way that's working for me. Any tips or addon suggestions?

(I swear one of these days I'm going to learn Lua. Any day now. Really.)

On launch night, after spending the 70 gold to learn how to PokeWoW, I was NOT presented with quests from the Trainer, and assumed that the quests were restricted to MoP owners (as other Arsians who had MoP were talking about how I should go talk to that same NPC to start the quests). The next day, the NPC had the quests, so I imagine that the lack of quests was a minor bug. It's also possible that relogging could have fixed the problem, since I'd been online from 9 PM before the launch to 3 AM after the launch.

A thought just occurred to me. Due to the lore behind the creation of Death Knights, it would seem that Pandaren (and any other race that Blizzard introduces to WoW in future expansions) can never become Death Knights. Since Arthas had a personal hand in the creation of Death Knights in the first place, it would stand to reason that Death Knights are no longer being produced. Any race that is introduced after Arthas' defeat, chronologically, could never be raised and prepped by Arthas and his minions to be Death Knights. So, in that sense, the Death Knight is a "dead" class.

Will Blizz ever introduce other "advanced" classes like that? Will we see potential limited-window classes? Or will WoW collapse under its own weight before something like that happens again?

As someone who started over completely, I don't understand the need for the 70 gold for pet battles. As far as I know, that amount of gold is trivial to a high level character. What it means for me however is that I will not be able to participate in pet battles for quite some time.

I was thinking the same thing, Nekojin. They were based on the story, and so you would think they can no longer be created. But doesn't someone always have to be the lich king? The guy who took over for Arthas could make new death knights, but since he's a good guy or whatever, it wouldn't make sense for him to convert people against their will like Arthas did. Not to mention all that Death Knight starter quest stuff would have to be revamped... Maybe they'll do it in Cataclysm 2, a couple expansions from now.

I also want to say that I'm pretty glad there's a new thread. There's a website for ABS isn't there? Maybe that could be added to the OP.

E: Crolis, are you on a server with friends or Ars members or anything? I'm sure anyone would gladly pass the money along. I'm pretty poor, and even I wouldn't have any trouble passing you 70 gold. I agree it seems like kind of a pointless gold sink, especially when you're low level.

I'm having trouble adjusting to the new Druid tanking system. I know it isn't radically different, but it is different enough that I'm either watching cooldowns/rage or being situationally aware, but not both. I used BadKitty in Cata but the author hasn't updated it in a way that's working for me. Any tips or addon suggestions?

(I swear one of these days I'm going to learn Lua. Any day now. Really.)

E: Crolis, are you on a server with friends or Ars members or anything? I'm sure anyone would gladly pass the money along. I'm pretty poor, and even I wouldn't have any trouble passing you 70 gold. I agree it seems like kind of a pointless gold sink, especially when you're low level.

I'm in ABS, but I don't really like asking for charity. I was more just wondering why they put that in there in the first place thinking there might be a legit reason.

I was thinking the same thing, Nekojin. They were based on the story, and so you would think they can no longer be created. But doesn't someone always have to be the lich king? The guy who took over for Arthas could make new death knights, but since he's a good guy or whatever, it wouldn't make sense for him to convert people against their will like Arthas did. Not to mention all that Death Knight starter quest stuff would have to be revamped... Maybe they'll do it in Cataclysm 2, a couple expansions from now.

I also want to say that I'm pretty glad there's a new thread. There's a website for ABS isn't there? Maybe that could be added to the OP.

I had no http when I added the link, fixed it up now

Also, you could consider that when you run the DK scenario it is like a TV show, '...xxx number of years ago, a young Panda came across these events... and was TRANSFORMED forever!'

E: Crolis, are you on a server with friends or Ars members or anything? I'm sure anyone would gladly pass the money along. I'm pretty poor, and even I wouldn't have any trouble passing you 70 gold. I agree it seems like kind of a pointless gold sink, especially when you're low level.

I'm in ABS, but I don't really like asking for charity. I was more just wondering why they put that in there in the first place thinking there might be a legit reason.

It's worth mentioning that the 70 gold is an ACCOUNT-WIDE payment - pay for it once, have it available on all characters.

I suspect that the steep cost is to keep genuinely new players from getting distracted from actual leveling with the side-action metagame.

Assuming that the chance for a mob to drop a Mote of Harmony is roughly equal to 10% + (1% x (Mob Level - 85)) - which was a rough calculation found on WoWhead - how many level 90 mobs would you have to kill to have an 85% of getting the 10 motes you need for a spirit? How many level 85 mobs? I'm certain there's some way to calculate it but I can't get my brain to figure out the right math.

It seems like, at level 90, assuming a drop rate of 15%, that solving (1 - .15) ^ X = 0.85^X = 0.15 for X comes out to about 11.66 mobs to get an 85% chance at 1 mote. However, just multiplying that by 10 doesn't feel right. Of course, it's been too many years since I was in school or tried to seriously figure out probabilities on anything for me to be remotely sure of any of this.

E: Crolis, are you on a server with friends or Ars members or anything? I'm sure anyone would gladly pass the money along. I'm pretty poor, and even I wouldn't have any trouble passing you 70 gold. I agree it seems like kind of a pointless gold sink, especially when you're low level.

I'm in ABS, but I don't really like asking for charity. I was more just wondering why they put that in there in the first place thinking there might be a legit reason.

If you want to read into it, it probably means that at a certain level the developers have internalized the assumption of no more significant growth.

As far as the gold goes, you're fucked now. I'd be surprised if someone won't have sent you gold before I get home and do it. If charity bothers you, consider it a loan. Don't forget, there are (or were) some netherweave bags in the guildbank, as well. That's why they're there.

If you want to read into it, it probably means that at a certain level the developers have internalized the assumption of no more significant growth.

That was kinda my first thought but if 70 gold is trivial and thus not a gold sink of some sort, I don't understand the point. Again though, I don't want to distract from the thread with this as I mainly posted my question as a way to mark the new thread as posted in.

Quote:

As far as the gold goes, you're fucked now. I'd be surprised if someone won't have sent you gold before I get home and do it. If charity bothers you, consider it a loan. Don't forget, there are (or were) some netherweave bags in the guildbank, as well. That's why they're there.

If you want to read into it, it probably means that at a certain level the developers have internalized the assumption of no more significant growth.

That was kinda my first thought but if 70 gold is trivial and thus not a gold sink of some sort, I don't understand the point. Again though, I don't want to distract from the thread with this as I mainly posted my question as a way to mark the new thread as posted in.

Quote:

As far as the gold goes, you're fucked now. I'd be surprised if someone won't have sent you gold before I get home and do it. If charity bothers you, consider it a loan. Don't forget, there are (or were) some netherweave bags in the guildbank, as well. That's why they're there.

Whether I like asking for charity or not, it isn't unappreciated.

Whether or not one takes this at face value is a separate question, but for what it's worth, they have officially commented on this.

Q: As a brand new player just getting into World of Warcraft for the very first time, what can I expect [with regards to Pet Battles]?

Cory Stockton, Lead Content Designer wrote:

For one thing, the 100g training cost is going to make it difficult for a new player to get caught up in Pet Battles super-early, and that's by design, because everyone should learn how to play World of Warcraft first. Having said that, a new alt that can get 100g from another character can start the Pet Battle system at level 5.

From there, the system grows with you if you keep up with it, much like professions do.

Tell me about it, while I was leveling my Gnome Monk I came across the Pet Battle trainer in Kharanos and I couldn't help myself. I convinced myself that there are quests and reward xp, so it was my duty to partake. If I wasn't power leveling a toon from scratch, this would have been my obsession this weekend. I'll have to settle for chain RDF runs and queuing as tank/heals once I get to 30.

About halfway through the Jade Forest zone on my arms warrior, I decided to try the instance and randomed in with some pubbies. Tank was a pally which made me feel good as I've rarely had a bad pally tank. However the first trash pack, I instantly pull aggro of whatever I'm hitting. Same thing for the next few groups. As much as a bad ass I like to think I am, I shouldn't be pulling aggro like that. I ask the pally if he's using whatever the thing that pally tanks use to help with aggro which he said he is.

Me: This is weird...Tank: Yeah, you're pulling aggro like a tank.Me: Yeah, ha...

Wait, what? Crap...

I was in defensive stance the entire time. In fact, I think I've been in defensive stance since I started Jade Forest. Since my abilities no longer have stance requirements, I've been playing an arms warrior in defensive stance and never knew it. Damn noob...

Rest of the instance went smooth, except for the last boss when the other 2 dps got locked out of the boss room. We successfully 3 manned it.

That was kinda my first thought but if 70 gold is trivial and thus not a gold sink of some sort, I don't understand the point. Again though, I don't want to distract from the thread with this as I mainly posted my question as a way to mark the new thread as posted in.

70 gold is trivial if you have a gathering profession, and collect a few stacks to auction while questing. By level 10 I'll usually have a few hundred gold this way (and ultra-low pop Chromaggus didn't seem to be an exception.) I do agree that what Blizzard said about being a barrier for people who haven't learned to play yet though.

I really should dust off my druid on Chromaggus and hunt down an ABS officer, as it looks like my former raiding guild died over on Thrall while I was away. Not much time invested in leveling my current main druid this expansion, but I'd rather not leave my hoard of gold behind.

ClydeJr, I did that when I first checked out the new 5.0 changes. Hopped on my tank and did an instance. I remember reading in here that threat was kind of crappy now, and it sure seemed weak! I even commented to the group that threat sucked now, and I was really sad. After we killed the last boss, I noticed that I didn't have any stance selected. Once I turned on defensive stance things went much more smoothly.

But speaking of stances, for dps warriors, what are you guys choosing? I used battle stance for quite a while, partly because I'm arms and it just seemed familiar. But lately I found that it seems berserker stance does a lot better while questing. You get less rage from attacks I assume, but you also get rage from getting hit. Either way I feel pretty rage starved, but I'm guessing you'd want battle stance when you're taking little to no damage. Otherwise, berserker stance. Does that sound correct? There's no longer passive bonuses to damage from what I can tell.

The discussion about Pandaren and Death Knights made me think about a topic that I've pondered before - the metagame issue of time in an MMO. Pre-Cataclysm, it was possible to have a character that had already gone through the Apothecary Revolt storyline from Wrath of the Lich King (where the Apothecary Society had perfected the Forsaken Plague), and then go play a new character through the low-end quest A New Plague in Brill, which is all about the Forsaken developing a Forsaken Plague (This quest no longer exists, due to the home zone revamping in Cataclysm and bringing the entire universe up to the base timeline starting with Deathwing's awakening). Obviously, those can't be happening concurrently, so the actual chronology of those is reversed from how the player just experienced them.

So, I'm pondering the whole meta-game issue of character time vs. player time. And I don't have enough real-world time to muse about it any longer, because the break bell just went off. More later.

As someone who started over completely, I don't understand the need for the 70 gold for pet battles. As far as I know, that amount of gold is trivial to a high level character. What it means for me however is that I will not be able to participate in pet battles for quite some time.

That's pretty much the reason there. They want new people to spend their time leveling, not fooling around with mini-games.

But speaking of stances, for dps warriors, what are you guys choosing? I used battle stance for quite a while, partly because I'm arms and it just seemed familiar. But lately I found that it seems berserker stance does a lot better while questing. You get less rage from attacks I assume, but you also get rage from getting hit. Either way I feel pretty rage starved, but I'm guessing you'd want battle stance when you're taking little to no damage. Otherwise, berserker stance. Does that sound correct? There's no longer passive bonuses to damage from what I can tell.

I have no first hand knowledge of this since I've been in battle stance the entire time (besides my oops defensive stance time). However every where I've read, they've said to stay in battle stance for both arms and fury unless you know you're going to take sustained damage for a while (think phase 2 of Zonnozz (tentacle guy) in Dragon Soul).

Hmm, ok, thanks. I probably did Panda zones half and half so far. I started in battle stance and changed it up. There wasn't a huge difference, but I really felt that I was getting a bit more rage from berserker. I was solo questing the whole time, so in combat I was taking pretty consistent damage. I suppose in 5 mans and raids you would probably want battle stance unless you're in a situation like you mentioned. My test wasn't exactly scientific though, so I wonder which is more useful for typical solo quest play.

/run for i=1,C_PetBattles.GetNumPets(2) do SELECTED_CHAT_FRAME:AddMessage(C_PetBattles.GetName(2,i).." - ".._G["BATTLE_PET_BREED_QUALITY"..C_PetBattles.GetBreedQuality(2,i)]) end

Just remember to bind it to a key that doesn't get replaced by the Pet Battle UI.

And to reiterate a point I made on the last thread, if you aren't leveling 6 pets, you're going to regret it around level 15 or so. You need to have more than 3 pets that you can swap around as they get injured while battling.

I've only got about 2 hours in MoP logged so far - last night I messed around with the new Druid forms and a few glyphs in Stormwind, and I just went through some of the intro missions in Pandaria (up to "go meet the leader").

Last night I had fun, but tonight, not so much. Aside from the usual early-expansion douchebaggery of people stealing every mob in sight, so far I really don't like what they've done to Feral. No more charge (unless I want to be slow), which is a huge change, and combat seems to have reverted to spamming mangle until stuff dies.

I feel like I have no mobility anymore, and just spamming 1 button isn't all that fun.

I'm hoping things will improve rapidly, but maybe I really just did completely burn out due to Cata. I still need more time on it to be certain, but all of the previous expansions had managed to grab me by now.

When patch 5 first hit, it seemed like every hunter's pet had growl on. I almost feel guilty for letting so many animals die (being a bear and all). Usually by the third boss, and after asking if growl was on with no response, the pet would suddenly drop from the top of the aggro list.

Can I get a glyph of ventriliquist that'll let me redirect my growl to someone else?

A thought just occurred to me. Due to the lore behind the creation of Death Knights, it would seem that Pandaren (and any other race that Blizzard introduces to WoW in future expansions) can never become Death Knights. Since Arthas had a personal hand in the creation of Death Knights in the first place, it would stand to reason that Death Knights are no longer being produced. Any race that is introduced after Arthas' defeat, chronologically, could never be raised and prepped by Arthas and his minions to be Death Knights. So, in that sense, the Death Knight is a "dead" class.

If the horde had claimed the Lich King for itself instead of letting that pansy Fordragon assume the throne, they’d still be producing new death knights.

Quote:

Will Blizz ever introduce other "advanced" classes like that? Will we see potential limited-window classes? Or will WoW collapse under its own weight before something like that happens again?

Blizzard devs have said it’s possible, but I doubt it. The design of hero classes changed from converting one class into another to just starting at a higher level with a free pony.

Assuming that the chance for a mob to drop a Mote of Harmony is roughly equal to 10% + (1% x (Mob Level - 85)) - which was a rough calculation found on WoWhead - how many level 90 mobs would you have to kill to have an 85% of getting the 10 motes you need for a spirit? How many level 85 mobs? I'm certain there's some way to calculate it but I can't get my brain to figure out the right math.

It seems like, at level 90, assuming a drop rate of 15%, that solving (1 - .15) ^ X = 0.85^X = 0.15 for X comes out to about 11.66 mobs to get an 85% chance at 1 mote. However, just multiplying that by 10 doesn't feel right. Of course, it's been too many years since I was in school or tried to seriously figure out probabilities on anything for me to be remotely sure of any of this.

I did get a chance to play for about an hour last night (after a lovely 3 hour queue), and jumping into the new continent was a breath of fresh air. I'm not worried in the slightest about keeping up with my guild, so I'm just gonna take it easy and go through each zone in my own time.